Sunday, January 4, 2015

Hello all. For my
first post of 2015, I am going back to blogging through ye old alphabet. Today I is for identity politics. Identity politics are how identifying with a
specific category of people might shape your political views. Identity politics are often associated with minorities
and left wing politics (ex: feminism, race and civil rights, the disability
movement, gay rights, class struggles, etc.).
Identity politics works by minority influence. This is when a minority gets the majority to
see things to see things their way.

The term identity politics was created in the 1970’s for
consciousness raising. It is a way to
show people how their personal hardships are created due to their being part of
a discriminated group. It has been very controversial. Many people, like historian Arthur Schlesinger
Jr. say the only way to help minorities is to move them toward full acceptance
and integrate them into the mainstream.
They say identity politics causes social fractures and make minorities
stand out more. Others say mainstream
culture is too intolerant for total integration, and multicultural pluralism is
a more realistic target. There is also
debate, especially within LGBT activism is to what degree their identity is an essential
aspect of those people, or a culturally created category they chose on some
level. I am not going to dignify those who call homosexuality a choice with with a response, but I do agree that the cause of an identity is relevant in identity politics.

The intersex movement is a great example of identity politics. Removed from all sociopolitical context we
are talking about several different medical conditions. Ironically it was our treatment by the medical
community that was what gave us common grounds to form an identity. This realization of our shared experience was
the consciousness raising event that allowed us to find our voice and started
the movement. We have been using these
experiences to gain mainstream support for over two decades now. It is likely that if intersex people were
hidden, but not operated on, there would be no intersex movement. We would be entirely unknown to the
mainstream and would all think we were the only one like us, and that would be
tragic.

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Hello readers, this post is my holiday special. Pour yourself an eggnog, cozy up by the fire,
and listen as I regale you with a tale that is wintery, queer, and kind of
funny. The story of the latest
propaganda for the gay agenda, a little movie called Frozen.

Anyone with young children has almost certainly seen Frozen,
probably more times than they can count. Kevin Swanson, a pastor of the Reformation
Church and host of a religious radio show in Colorado, called Frozen “very evil”
and Disney is “one of the most pro-homosexual organizations in the country.” Swanson’s rant was inspired by a National Catholic
Register blog post written by film critic Steven Greydanus titled “So, How Gay
is Frozen.” This post says Elsa’s lack
of a male suitor implies lesbianism and the song Let it Go where Elsa learns to
accept herself and her powers is a coming out metaphor. He also says Anna wanting an immediate
wedding to Prince Hans, who she just met, implies that straight people are
harming marriage. The post continues to
claim that Kristoff’s relationship with his reindeer Sven is borderline bestiality. This accusation of Frozen as being propaganda
seems to have started with the blog A Well Behaved Mormon Women, written by
Kathryn Skaggs who wrote extensively about it.
When asked about these gay accusations, director Jennifer Lee only said “I
feel like once we hand the film over, it belongs to the world, so I don't like
to say anything, and let the fans talk. I think it's up to them."

Many movies, books and TV shows aver the years have been accused of spreading a gay agenda, Frozen is just the latest. Here is my take on this ridiculous “nontorversy.” Self-acceptance is something every healthy
well-adjusted person must attain. The
search for self-acceptance by a misfit is the theme of more books, movies, and
TV shows than I could ever name; most of which are not accused of being gay propaganda. Being single does not mean
one is a closeted homosexual. Thus, Elsa
is not necessarily a lesbian, just single and well-adjusted. I feel that drunken Las Vegas weddings,
AshleyMadison.com, and super short celebrity marriages (I’m looking at you Kim
Kardashian) all cheapen marriage and are produced by and for straight
people. That being said, the vast
majority of straight people take their vows far more seriously than this, and
gay people could do similar, tacky things.
Therefore, I think Anna wanting an immediate marriage to a stranger should
be seen as youthful overenthusiasm, not an indictment against heterosexual
relationships, most of which are serious, loving and committed. As for Kristoff and his reindeer, I can’t
comment about that.

Whatever holiday you celebrate, I hope you all have a great
one. Be merry and remember not to listen
to crazy people on the internet (sometime that includes me). Frozen is a great movie, it reminds me of
Pixar, pre-Cars. If your kids get squirrely
during the festivities, I totally recommend putting it on for them.

Sunday, November 30, 2014

Today I am writing about an issue that is happening in my
home state of Minnesota (I will continue blogging my way through the alphabet
later). On October 1, the Minnesota
State High School League postponed voting on whether transgender high school
athletes should be able to train and compete on the team who’s gender they
identify as until December. This
prompted two fear mongering ads saying “males” would be showering with “girls”
and the girls (who obviously can’t keep up with these “males”) would lose out
on sports scholarships.

I have written about the issue of intersex people at the Olympics
several times on this blog. The issue
that everything boils down to is perceived physical advantages males (or
intersex people) have over women in sports.
First of all this is very sexist, the marathon finishing time for men
and women in closing every year (women’s fat distribution makes them better equipped
for distance running, and allegedly men hold back to protect their genitals
from getting bounced around too much). If
we take gender out of the picture we realize all sports have physical features
that make them easier. For example,
being taller is an advantage in basketball, and being lighter is an advantage
in ski jumping. Being intersex is not
really an advantage, AIS women have less testosterone then ciswomen. These advantages or disadvantages are in both
men and women’s sports, why can’t transgender and intersex people be seen as
another variation with its own advantages and disadvantages?

As for locker room problems, that is
something transgender people have been struggling with for ages. Perhaps a separate locker room for them would
make all parties more comfortable? I
honestly don’t know, but I do know that transgender people have a lot more to
fear from a public restroom then cisgender people who might encounter a
transgender person there. In any case,
implying a rape threat by saying a “male” is showering with your high school
daughter is blatant fear mongering. As a
side note, it usually works the other way.
The few cases of transgender high school athletes have been transmen,
not transwomen.

I hope the state I call home makes the right decision and
stands up for transgender rights.
Everyone should have the right to compete, or at least try out for, the
team they are comfortable with. There
are many cases of women competing on the men’s high school sports teams. If we put aside our transphobia, we will
realize this is not a difficult issue to solve.

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

I mentioned earlier that I wanted to write more about
historical intersex people. Today, as a
buffer between H and I, I am writing about Queen Christina of Sweden, who was
possibly intersex.

She was born in 1626 in Stockholm, the only heir to King
Gustav II. When she was born she was
initially announced around the palace to be a male, this was quickly corrected,
but certainly fuels the suspicion that she was intersex. They say she was hairy and had a strong, coarse
voice for a newborn.

As the heir
presumptive, she received a “princely education” including masculine activities
such as fencing, archery, hunting and horsemanship. She took to these activities with great
enthusiasm. By all accounts she was
quite the tomboy. She often wore men’s
clothing and was said to walk and ride like a man and curse like a sailor. In her autobiography she wrote that that she
had “an insurmountable distaste for all the things that females talked about
and did” again fueling the argument she was intersex.

At the age of 16 she became queen of Sweden at in 1632 when
her father died in battle. Her court and
advisors strongly pushed her to marry to create a political alliance and
produce a clear heir to the throne. She
was very opposed to the idea, claiming to have “an insurmountable distaste for
marriage.” This continued to fuel rumors
at the time that she was a hermaphrodite or at least a lesbian. She named her cousin Charles Gustav her
successor, but this did not reduce the pressure.

The pressure to marry grew to the point where she abdicated
in 1654, at age 22, making Charles king.
She converted to Catholicism, a religion she long admired and may have
fueled her abdication since Sweden was fiercely Lutheran. She moved to Rome and joined the court of
Pope Alexander VII, who was thrilled to host her, believing Sweden might
convert with her. She lived in Rome
until her death in 1689 at age 62. She
is one of the few women buried in the Vatican vaults.

Because of the strong rumors about her being
intersex, she was exhumed in 1965 to see if they could find any conclusive
evidence. Anthropologist Carl-Herman
Hjortsjö lead the investigation. He admitted
that “Our imperfect knowledge concerning the effect of intersexuality on the
skeletal formation makes it impossible to decide which positive skeletal
findings should be demanded upon which to base the diagnosis of intersexuality.” That being said he concluded the skeleton was
typically female. Was she intersex? She might have been. Some historians speculate that she had polycystic
ovarian syndrome which has many symptoms including hirsutism and possibly even Aspergers,
leading to a disregard for social norms. In any case she was certainly a gender
nonconformist and an interesting historical figure

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Today H is for homosexuality. I have written about the relationship between
homosexuality and intersex before, but it is complicated, so a refresher is in
order. If you believe sexual orientation
is dependent on biological sex (it’s not) then by definition you would have to
believe all intersex people are bisexual (they aren’t).

Society lumps intersex together with the LGBT community all
the time. This is sometimes done by
straight cisgender people (the few who know about intersex) who don’t recognize
the differences and nuanced varieties of sex and gender. Other times this lumping is done by LGBT
activists who see us as having a common interest in fighting for sex and gender
variance. This automatic lumping, though
usually well intended, is somewhat ignorant.
Many intersex people consider themselves to be straight, and live in
seemingly heterosexual relationships. They
often do not want to be associated with the LGBT movement or sexual politics.

That being said, gays and intersex people have a lot in
common. We both face discrimination based
on sexual and gender norms. Homosexuals,
transgender people, intersex people, genderqueer or any gender nonconforming
people, would do well to band together.
Even if they do not identify as gay, intersex people are still
discriminated against and mutilated.
Their issues and concerns overlap with gay and transgender issues to the
point they make natural allies.

Sexual orientation and biological sex are separate issues. Homosexuality depends, by definition, on
biological sex categories. Gay and
straight relationships, by definition, require people to identify as men and
women, you can’t have a same sex relationship if there are no socially
recognized sexes. The same is true of
intersex. Intersex wouldn’t exist as a
social group that deviates from male and female if those groups didn’t exist. Our social catagories were just made to
define us as separate from the mainstream. Can an intersex person be gay (or
straight)? That depends on their gender
identity and sexual orientation, I think they can, but some might disagree with
me, it’s all a matter of identity and definition.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

I have been wanting to cover more historical people who are
intersex, so today H is for Herculine Barbin.
Most of what we know about Barbin’s tragic life comes from her memoirs.

Herculine Barbin was
born in Saint-Jean-d’Angley France in 1838.
She (pronouns will change throughout this story) was raised female. Her family was poor but sent her to study at
a convent school on a charity scholarship.
She had a crush on a girl there are and was punished for going into her
room. In puberty she never menstruated
and remained flat chested. In 1857 at
the age of 17 she graduated and went to Le Chateau to become a teacher. A year later she got a job as a assistant
teacher at a girls school. She fell in
love with one of the teachers there, Sara, and the two had an affair.

Barbin was often ill and suffered excrutiating pain. She had talked about her condition in
confession. She asked the Bishop of La
Rochelle, Jean-Francios-Ann Landriot for permission to break the silence of the
confessional to see a doctor. Doctor Chesnet
examined her in 1860 was shocked to discover she had a small vagina, small
penis and internal testicles.

A judge made a legal decision to declare Barbin officially
male, with the name Abel Barbin. This
made the news in some of the French papers.
He (told you the pronouns would change, this is how it is in the memoirs)
left Sara and the girls school and moved to Paris and lived there in poverty. There he wrote these memoirs, reputedly as a
part of therapy. Obviously very
depressed the memoirs say he felt punished, disinherited and subject to a “ridiculous
inquisition”.

In 1868, at the age of 30, Barbin was found dead. He had committed suicide by inhaling gas from
his coal gas stove. The memoirs were
found beside his bed.

Herculine Barbin is a very important figure in the intersex
movement. The memoirs were rediscoverd
by sociologist and gender theorist Michael Foucault who published them is
1980. The French film The Mystery of Alexina and the play Herculine are based on her life. She also is a character in the plays A Mouthful of Birds by Caryl Churchill
and David Lan and Hidden: a Gender by
Kate Bornstein. The books Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides and Orlando by Virginia Woolf were inspired
by the memoirs. Her birthday, November
8, is the international Intersex Day of Rememberance.

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Our first word is hermaphrodite (no surprise there,
right?). A hermaphrodite is an organism
with male and female reproductive organs.
Many animals are hermaphroditic species like earthworms, snails,
starfish etc. Most flowering plants are
also hermaphroditic.

Historically intersex conditions were classified as either
true hermaphrodites (with a mix of ovarian and testicular tissue, or an ovary
and a testicle) or pseudohermaphrodites (all other intersex conditions). This has obviously fallen out of favor for
the term intersex. This is a good
nomenclature switch since humans are not a hermaphroditic species. There are no intersex conditions that result
in a body that is reproductively functional as a male and female. As I mentioned in my ambiguous genitalia
post, more masculine genitals mean less feminine and vice versa, you don’t get
both in humans.

I have to admit, I sometimes use the word hermaphrodite to
describe myself to others. I realize
this is controversial. Many intersex
people consider the word hermaphrodite offensive, or at least not PC. Others
use it as a term of empowerment. I find
it makes a good shorthand for people who have never heard of intersex. They already have some idea what
hermaphrodite means, thus shortening what would be a lengthy explanation. Am I right to do this? Am I being offensive or is it ok to shorten
explanations in a way people will better understand? Do you call yourself a hermaphrodite? I would love to hear your opinions.